The Internet Blog

Peter Sunde Banned From The Pirate Bay

Earlier this year The Pirate Bay’s co-founders Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij were banned from operating the site by a Swedish court. Today, The Pirate Bay’s former spokesperson Peter Sunde was added to this list, and now faces a fine of nearly $70,000 if he does not comply with the decision.

Directly or indirectly, The Pirate Bay and its ‘founders’ have been involved in a dozen court cases in the past years, most notably the trial in which four people associated with the site were sentenced to one year in jail and hefty fines.

Despite this unfavorable verdict, which will be appealed later this year, the site itself remains online aside from some incidental hosting issues. To change this course, Hollywood movie studios have been going after the alleged operators of the site in court, and not without success.

In May this year, the Swedish Court of Appeals confirmed an earlier judgement by the District Court, prohibiting two of the site’s founding members – Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij – from operating the site. Failure to comply with the court’s decision will result in fines of 500,000 kronor (~$70,000) each.

Today, The Pirate Bay’s former spokesperson Peter Sunde was added to this list by the District Stockholm Court and now faces the same fine as his former colleagues for non-compliance.

It is doubtful that this latest decision will have any impact on The Pirate Bay’s operation. Similar to Fredrik and Gottfrid, Peter has previously stated that he is no longer involved with the site. Even more so, in the past Peter only acted as a spokesperson, he was never in charge of technical operations.

Peter Sunde confirmed this stance to us today, and noted that he was surprised by the ruling of the District Court.

“The interesting thing with the ruling is that the Swedish Court feels that they can judge me even though I do not live in Sweden and neither is the system [TPB],” Sunde said.

Indeed, all of the three people who are now banned from operating the site no longer live in Sweden. This also complicates the enforcement of the rulings since it is pretty much impossible to check whether or not Peter, Fredrik and Gottfrid are complying with their demands.

Peter Sunde told us that he will appeal the decision of the District Court. However, this appeal will be most likely scheduled after the appeal of The Pirate Bay trial this autumn so it may already be irrelevant by then.

“I’ve already appealed the decision, so it will have no effect anyhow. The new court case [appeal of The Pirate Bay trial] is coming up even before this will be in appeal…” Sunde said. Until then, Sunde continues to work full-time on his social payment startup Flattr.